ADHD Insights – Pianodao

ADHD and piano competitions

ADHD • Insights for Pianists
Andrew Eales with Louise Eales RMN, NMP

Continuing our series exploring the challenges and opportunities faced by pianists with ADHD, this article unpacks the issues hat we can face when taking part in competitive piano events, ranging from local festivals and school competitions to major international competitions.

The article arose from our many conversations about the topic of how ADHD has impacted my own piano journey. Louise and I hope to foster understanding, encourage players who feel confused by their reactions to competition, and promote discussion about how the broader music community might create a healthier, more inclusive performance culture.

For an in-depth introduction to ADHD, outlining what it is, how it is diagnosed and treated, and how it impacts piano players more generally please refer to our article ADHD • A Pianist’s Guide.

Adaptive Teaching and Metacognition

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I’m happy to welcome back KAREN MARSHALL with a new piece for Pianodao’s ADHD Insights series. Karen’s writing again reflects our shared focus on inclusive, practical, and thoughtful piano teaching…

Supporting neurodivergent pianists

Adaptive teaching has become an established principle across education in recent years and is widely recognised as an effective way of supporting neurodivergent learners. Rather than creating entirely separate lesson plans for pupils with additional needs, the aim of adaptive teaching is to adjust in the moment, or plan ahead so that every child can access a rich, rewarding curriculum.

But let’s be honest: as instrumental teachers, we’ve been doing this since the year dot! One of the great strengths of one-to-one music teaching is that we already provide every student with a bespoke learning experience.

Having spent years bridging the gap between classroom experiences and my private piano teaching, I often ask myself: how do we take these academic ideas and make them truly work in an instrumental lesson?

ADHD and ‘micro-breaks’

ADHD • Insights for Pianists
Andrew Eales with Louise Eales RMN, NMP

Everybody seems to be talking about Molly Gebrian’s book Learn Faster, Perform Better (OUP 2024, available here) and rightly so: it is a superb read, well argued, engagingly written, and filled with brilliant tips and advice on how musicians can practise more effectively.

Author Molly Gebrian holding a viola, with the book 'Learn Faster, Perform Better' displayed next to her. — Molly Gebrian with her book ‘Learn Faster, Perform Better’

We all want to improve, and Gebrian offers insights from neuroscience that back up many of our well-established strategies for effective practice, along with some interesting newer nuggets of advice, including what has become one of her signature suggestions: incorporating “micro-breaks” between repetitions when perfecting technical passages.

Who really needs mnemonics?

Supporting Piano Education
Article written by Andrew Eales

Long established as a memory tool for note reading, well-worn mnemonics such as All Cows Eat Grass and Every Good Boy Deserves Football seem to have fallen out of favour in piano teaching circles these days.

Some suggest mnemonics should be avoided altogether, claiming that they are detrimental because:

they add an extra step for the learner decoding notation
they mitigate against the development of intervallic reading, harmonic understanding, and pattern recognition
they don’t scale for reading ledger lines, different clefs, etc
they can create a level of dependency that makes the transition to fluent reading harder

These are certainly important points to consider.

But when we explore the research into the use of mnemonics, a very different picture emerges. And teachers may notice that they are often recommended for learners who are dyslexic or with neurodiversity such as ADHD.

So what is the truth of the matter: are mnemonics useful, and if so for whom? Perhaps a balanced reassessment of the topic, grounded in academic and scientific research, is overdue. So let’s begin with the science bit…

ADHD • A Pianist’s Guide

ADHD • Insights for Pianists
Andrew Eales with Louise Eales RMN, NMP

ADHD, or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, has become a hot topic of discussion in recent years, the apparent explosion of both child and adult diagnoses much commented on in the media and society at large.

This article has been cowritten with my wife Louise, who has three decades clinical experience working with children, and latterly adults, who have ADHD. She is now an advanced practitioner at ADHD 360, a leading private ADHD diagnosis and treatment clinic. We gratefully acknowledge that the Clinical Director has peer-reviewed this article prior to its publication here.

For my part, I have lived with this condition for a lifetime, only belatedly recognised and formally diagnosed in my fifties. ADHD has had a huge impact on my piano journey.

Our shared aim is to provide pianists and educators with a unique, relevant, and practical perspective which combines Louise’s clinical expertise with my personal experience, and which specifically addresses the challenges those with ADHD face in the practice room, piano lesson and at live events.

The article which follows addresses many common questions, explaining what ADHD is, its causes, history, the signs and symptoms. We then go on to apply this to piano practice, lessons and performance, offering strategies to help those with ADHD and their teachers. Finally, Louise outlines the process of diagnosis and available medications.

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